Reliable and Efficient System for Community Energy Solution- RESCUES
Lead Research Organisation:
Imperial College London
Department Name: Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Abstract
25 million rural Indian households do not have access to electricity and the rest of the rural households face 4-5 hours of daily load shedding. In the UK, 17.2% rural households are fuel poor and it takes 10 times longer to restore power supply in rural areas than in the cities. While in India it is the inadequacy of infrastructure, the UK scene is dominated by network operation and control issues.
Most of these remote regions have local power resources but mainly intermittent in nature. Running such system in isolation requires storage and thus pushing the overall cost up. On and off grid through hybrid AC/DC micro grid concept is very revolutionary in this context. However, the operation in such mode does not come unchallenged.
The technical issues are low inertia because of small synchronous generators and inverter based generation, unbalanced demand, asymmetric network, false tripping of DG during mode transition, excessive harmonic distortion because of power electronics driven customer loads, etc. The challenges represent a major test of the power engineering community. This is because, in order to solve them, experts from different specialities - distribution system operation and control, power electronic converter design and control, energy storage must come together and fuse different enabling technologies for making smart distribution grid truly functional.
This consortium, drawing in experts from each of these technical areas, proposes to undertake fundamental technical research to fuse these technologies to make a community grid a reality. The overarching aim of this proposal is to invent appropriate, cost effective, scalable, secure and reliable local energy system.
The innovations include cutting edge converter topology, control design, practical application of ground breaking voltage and frequency control, innovation in thermal storage in demand management and the output of DG intermittency and advanced system operation tools. Four prototype laboratory based systems will be designed tested and validated to reflect four different geographical and climate situations influencing the resource availability and consumption trends.
In the short to medium term this project will establish and strengthen the collaborations between the leading UK and Indian universities engaged in research in power electronics, renewable energy, power distribution operation and control and energy storage. This will promote mutual understanding of the challenge facing the power system practices in order to meet the growing energy demand through increasingly intermittent local energy resources in the years ahead. Strong collaboration between the scientists in two countries will allow rigorous evaluation of challenges, technology and approach to address the problem of reliably operating power distribution systems of both countries. This will lead to novel and scientific understanding validated on different contexts and systems, which could not be possibly achieved by either side working in isolation. The research outcome will be well publicized in journal and conferences.
While it is clear that the uptake of this research primarily benefit the community living in the remote region, the other inevitable impact is employment opportunity for local people, business opportunity for various companies such as EoN, GE Energy, Siemens, ALSTOM GRID, ABB in the UK and in India, to name a few. In a time when there is a universal crisis for power engineers, the project will deliver trained researchers with broader expertise of working in this multinational collaborative project. Many of the investigators on both the UK and Indian side already enjoy healthy collaborative working relationships with industrial and utility partners primarily within their own countries. This programme will clearly move the research frontier and will drive technology development through such true multinational research collaboration.
Most of these remote regions have local power resources but mainly intermittent in nature. Running such system in isolation requires storage and thus pushing the overall cost up. On and off grid through hybrid AC/DC micro grid concept is very revolutionary in this context. However, the operation in such mode does not come unchallenged.
The technical issues are low inertia because of small synchronous generators and inverter based generation, unbalanced demand, asymmetric network, false tripping of DG during mode transition, excessive harmonic distortion because of power electronics driven customer loads, etc. The challenges represent a major test of the power engineering community. This is because, in order to solve them, experts from different specialities - distribution system operation and control, power electronic converter design and control, energy storage must come together and fuse different enabling technologies for making smart distribution grid truly functional.
This consortium, drawing in experts from each of these technical areas, proposes to undertake fundamental technical research to fuse these technologies to make a community grid a reality. The overarching aim of this proposal is to invent appropriate, cost effective, scalable, secure and reliable local energy system.
The innovations include cutting edge converter topology, control design, practical application of ground breaking voltage and frequency control, innovation in thermal storage in demand management and the output of DG intermittency and advanced system operation tools. Four prototype laboratory based systems will be designed tested and validated to reflect four different geographical and climate situations influencing the resource availability and consumption trends.
In the short to medium term this project will establish and strengthen the collaborations between the leading UK and Indian universities engaged in research in power electronics, renewable energy, power distribution operation and control and energy storage. This will promote mutual understanding of the challenge facing the power system practices in order to meet the growing energy demand through increasingly intermittent local energy resources in the years ahead. Strong collaboration between the scientists in two countries will allow rigorous evaluation of challenges, technology and approach to address the problem of reliably operating power distribution systems of both countries. This will lead to novel and scientific understanding validated on different contexts and systems, which could not be possibly achieved by either side working in isolation. The research outcome will be well publicized in journal and conferences.
While it is clear that the uptake of this research primarily benefit the community living in the remote region, the other inevitable impact is employment opportunity for local people, business opportunity for various companies such as EoN, GE Energy, Siemens, ALSTOM GRID, ABB in the UK and in India, to name a few. In a time when there is a universal crisis for power engineers, the project will deliver trained researchers with broader expertise of working in this multinational collaborative project. Many of the investigators on both the UK and Indian side already enjoy healthy collaborative working relationships with industrial and utility partners primarily within their own countries. This programme will clearly move the research frontier and will drive technology development through such true multinational research collaboration.
Planned Impact
In 2011, the UK Government accepted the need for more than £110 billion by 2020 to build and reinforce its electricity generation and grid infrastructure. Security of supply, decarbonisation of electricity, an anticipated doubling of demand by 2050 and rapidly rising energy costs are the driver. A great majority of this will be in the distribution segment. The investment of such scale has not been witnessed in the UK in the last 30 years. While, in India the planned scale of investment is £64 billion in the next five year alone. In the UK, India and many other countries worldwide active control of distribution system is getting the primary importance. While it is clear that distribution network operators such as UK Power Networks, various state distribution companies are intended to be amongst the major beneficiaries of this research, it is anticipated that the research would also be of interest to organisations such as GE Energy, E-ON, Siemens, ALSTOM GRID, ABB in the UK and in India, to name a few. Many of the investigators on both the UK and Indian side already enjoy healthy collaborative working relationships with industrial and utility partners primarily within their own countries and this programme will clearly deliver greater bilateral exchange. The major innovation in this research lies in efficient device and module arrangement, laying-out and system integration and overall device to system level efficiency improvement. The research deliverables will have impact on the technology development, supply chain and the ancillary industry sector, global research community, and most importantly on business models and smart-energy households developments.
The overall impacts of RESCUES technology on the India/UK lie in three areas, (i) technology development: growing opportunities for the manufacturing of smart-grid and energy storage technologies to avoid power cut to communities (ii) accelerated decarbonisation of UK/Indian and global power generation and (iii) offering a significant contribution for the power industries, and employment creation after several years of struggling economic recovery. This project will have direct impact on society and policy makers through knowledge exchange exercise, participating national roadmaps, and organising public events such as participating Open days, school outreach programmes, IET professional network events, through on-going UK-India research collaboration in Solar and BURD programme and through open access RESCUES website. The Industrial Advisory Board (IAB) will be established to ensure the commercial impacts of this project to be realised, which will have significant economic and employment impact.
The consortium will train about 25 researchers (UK PhD student funded by University of Exeter) to help meet the growing need for trained scientists in energy systems and renewable energy. In addition, people will be trained through excellent research promotion programmes and networks available both at Imperial College London, IIT Kharagpur. Several researchers in the consortium have on-going joint international research activities such as STAPP (Pal/Chakraborty), UKIERI and BioCPV (Mallick/Reddy) with India and LEAP (Mallick) with China. Those channels will be exploited to disseminate the research expertise gathered in the project and it will help UK researcher to establish strong international development.
The overall impacts of RESCUES technology on the India/UK lie in three areas, (i) technology development: growing opportunities for the manufacturing of smart-grid and energy storage technologies to avoid power cut to communities (ii) accelerated decarbonisation of UK/Indian and global power generation and (iii) offering a significant contribution for the power industries, and employment creation after several years of struggling economic recovery. This project will have direct impact on society and policy makers through knowledge exchange exercise, participating national roadmaps, and organising public events such as participating Open days, school outreach programmes, IET professional network events, through on-going UK-India research collaboration in Solar and BURD programme and through open access RESCUES website. The Industrial Advisory Board (IAB) will be established to ensure the commercial impacts of this project to be realised, which will have significant economic and employment impact.
The consortium will train about 25 researchers (UK PhD student funded by University of Exeter) to help meet the growing need for trained scientists in energy systems and renewable energy. In addition, people will be trained through excellent research promotion programmes and networks available both at Imperial College London, IIT Kharagpur. Several researchers in the consortium have on-going joint international research activities such as STAPP (Pal/Chakraborty), UKIERI and BioCPV (Mallick/Reddy) with India and LEAP (Mallick) with China. Those channels will be exploited to disseminate the research expertise gathered in the project and it will help UK researcher to establish strong international development.
Organisations
- Imperial College London (Lead Research Organisation)
- INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY DELHI (Collaboration)
- Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology (Collaboration)
- Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur (Collaboration)
- Alstom (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
- E.ON (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
Publications
Merritt N
(2017)
New Voltage Control Strategies for VSC-Based DG Units in an Unbalanced Microgrid
in IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy
Battistelli C
(2017)
Probabilistic Dispatch of Remote Hybrid Microgrids Including Battery Storage and Load Management
in IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid
Basak S
(2017)
A New Optimal Current Control Technique for Dual Stator Winding Induction Generator
in IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Power Electronics
Nduka O
(2017)
Harmonic Domain Modeling of PV System for the Assessment of Grid Integration Impact
in IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy
Khanna S
(2017)
Optimization of PV-PCM system for South-West UK climate
Talapur G
(2018)
A Reliable Microgrid With Seamless Transition Between Grid Connected and Islanded Mode for Residential Community With Enhanced Power Quality
in IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications
Teja A
(2018)
Disturbance Rejection Analysis and FPGA-Based Implementation of a Second-Order Sliding Mode Controller Fed Induction Motor Drive
in IEEE Transactions on Energy Conversion
Description | The project has started in February 2014. We are undertaking underpinning research for developing an active renewable energy supply system for remote community. Three partners in the UK sides have roles in developing software for managing energy system, power conversion kit and their control for both AC and DC grid network for supplying to the customer at customer voltage level. The objective is to minimise the losses in the system, making the system more reliable against any external disturbances. In this project an optimization framework is developed for operating and controlling Hybrid Microgrid. Several joint publications between UK and India have been achieved. Patents are filed . Follow on activity through a joint UK India research centre on solar energy is taking up the research to wider stake holding community The research on state estimation in distribution context has set the foundation for checking cyber security. |
Exploitation Route | The hybrid AC-DC Micro grid lab that is developed with Indian partner is useful for further testing ideas of network control We like to have further collaborative work with the researcher who was trained in this project who has now moved to an energy research centre in Ireland .Our optimal sizing of hybrid AC-DC system has been useful to develop prototype microgrid in Indian partner's site. |
Sectors | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software) Education Energy |
URL | http://www.imperial.ac.uk/electrical-engineering/research/control-and-power/research/rescues/ |
Description | 1. Three researchers from this grant have got positions in academia and research, making impact in the sector. Part of the research outcome (thermal storage model) are being prototype tested in laboratory. Pilot demonstration in India has happened in partner university . 2. The technology of microgrid control has been deployed in a local complex near IIT Khargpur for reliable supply of energy. 3. There have been industrial pilot project at IIT Kharagpur in trialling some of the power converter control. |
Sector | Agriculture, Food and Drink,Communities and Social Services/Policy,Education,Energy |
Impact Types | Cultural Societal Economic |
Description | Provided training to engineers from TNB Malaysia |
Geographic Reach | Multiple continents/international |
Policy Influence Type | Influenced training of practitioners or researchers |
Impact | The engineers have advanced themselves through further knowledge of the field |
URL | http://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/b.pal |
Description | Training to Engineers from Power Industry in Chile |
Geographic Reach | Multiple continents/international |
Policy Influence Type | Influenced training of practitioners or researchers |
Impact | The engineers from grid operator in Chile have now much advanced knowledge about power system and wind energy modelling |
URL | https://www.linkedin.com/in/bikash-pal-0ba3a413/ |
Description | Embedded systems for Integrated Photovoltaics in Rural Buildings: E-IPB I |
Amount | £800,000 (GBP) |
Funding ID | 71208-481703 |
Organisation | Innovate UK |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 03/2017 |
End | 03/2019 |
Description | Joint UK India Virtual Clean Energy Centre |
Amount | £5,000,000 (GBP) |
Funding ID | EP/P003605/1 |
Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 09/2016 |
End | 09/2020 |
Description | Network Innovation allowance |
Amount | £70,000 (GBP) |
Organisation | UK Power Networks |
Sector | Private |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 09/2016 |
End | 03/2018 |
Description | RE-EMPOWERED - Renewable Energy EMPOWERing European and InDian communities |
Amount | € 2,987,287 (EUR) |
Funding ID | 101018420 |
Organisation | European Commission |
Sector | Public |
Country | European Union (EU) |
Start | 06/2021 |
End | 12/2024 |
Description | Collaboration with IIT Kharagpur in Renewable Energy Integration |
Organisation | Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur |
Country | India |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | We have developed model of solar PV system that has been used by the researchers in the consortium. |
Collaborator Contribution | The collaborator developed method of power converter switching which tackled the challenges of interfacing PV inverter. |
Impact | Joint research publications resulted from this collaboration. Staff exchanges have taken place bilaterally. |
Start Year | 2009 |
Description | Visit to IIT Delhi India |
Organisation | Indian Institute of Technology Delhi |
Country | India |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | Worked on the Second order generalised control technique for smooth interfacing of the PV panels with the grid. The simulation of the proposed technique carried out and information shared with the partner. |
Collaborator Contribution | The hardware in the loop test was done in the lab at IIT Delhi electrical department with the partner (Dr Nishant) providing inputs based on his expertise. |
Impact | a joint publication in IEEE Transactions as follows: F. U. Nazir, N. Kumar, B. C. Pal, B. Singh and B. K. Panigrahi, "Enhanced SOGI Controller for Weak Grid Integrated Solar PV System," in IEEE Transactions on Energy Conversion, vol. 35, no. 3, pp. 1208-1217, Sept. 2020, doi: 10.1109/TEC.2020.2990866. |
Start Year | 2019 |
Description | Visit to Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology (VNIT) |
Organisation | Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology |
Department | Department of Electrical Engineering |
Country | India |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | Provide knowledge and experience in impedance based system modelling, simulation and stability assessment, and autonomous control design based on adaptive DC voltage hierarchy for DC microgrid system. One of the PDRA in Strathclyde, Dr Dong Chen was seconded to NIT in May 2015 for one week for enhancing research collaboration. |
Collaborator Contribution | Provide knowledge and experience in novel power electronics converters prototyping for renewable applications, and provide opportunities for practical development, experimental validation and on-site implementation. |
Impact | not yet. |
Start Year | 2015 |
Title | Brushless induction excited synchronous generator |
Description | It is a synchronous generator with a new excitation method. The excitation machine (a three phase induction machine) is embedded inside the same machine frame. |
IP Reference | Indian patent (Reference No: 201631039892) |
Protection | Patent granted |
Year Protection Granted | 2017 |
Licensed | No |
Impact | It is developed in laboratory and can be used for fixed/variable speed applications like wind energy, gensets, etc. |
Title | Synchronous Machine with Embedded Brushless Synchronous Exciter |
Description | It is a synchronous generator with a new excitation method. The excitation machine (an inverted synchronous machine) is embedded inside the same machine frame. |
IP Reference | Indian patent. (Reference No: 201731033722) |
Protection | Patent granted |
Year Protection Granted | 2017 |
Licensed | No |
Impact | The prototype is developed in laboratory and can be used for various applications line wind energy conversions, gen-sets, etc. |
Company Name | Build Solar |
Description | Build Solar develops photovoltaic cells, for the collection of solar energy, that can be integrated with building features such as walls and skylights. |
Year Established | 2017 |
Impact | 60% of global carbon emissions are caused by buildings. Our vision is to challenge this adversity through the concept of Net Zero Energy buildings, meaning the total amount of energy used on an annual basis is roughly equal to the amount of renewable energy created on the site. BUILD SOLAR aims to commercialize innovative photovoltaic solutions by combining them with traditional construction materials and transforming buildings from energy consumers to power generators. Through a series of its products, the company is poised to become a major key player in the building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) industry. The BIPV market is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 16% between 2016 and 2024 and the global market is currently valued at $7 billion. To catch up with this growing industry and gather further momentum BUILD SOLAR is currently faced with several obstacles including lack of education about these technologies among architects, standard product specifications, building regulatory, manufacturing costs and lack of well-trained installers. Aimed at the commercial and public sectors, our first product Solar Squared provides standard benefits such as daylighting, protection, and structure alongside electricity generation and better thermal insulation. The company has established a route to market within the UK market through Glass Block Technology Limited, one of the major glass block sellers, distributors, and installers in Europe. The company will build a network of partnerships with similar glass block companies to access international markets in the future. We have already patented our technology through the following UK patent "Construction Block with Photovoltaic Device, PATENT APPLICATION NUMBER 1705840.5". Our technical impact has been very strong on the glass block industry wherein we have completely transformed a standard construction material into an innovative energy solution. Prototyping of our first product Solar Squared is in progress and we hope to complete it by August this year. Further new designs of the product are being developed for the next round of prototyping. Socially we have presented our product to the public, researchers and school children visiting the Environment & Sustainability Institute at the University of Exeter. We have also participated in the stakeholder workshop on BIPV technologies organized by BRE. Through this workshop we have introduced our product to existing BIPV manufacturers and gathered their feedback, understand the wider challenges BIPV industry faces and unlock routes for future developments. The Solar Squared unit will improve the performance of a widely used building material (glass block). The function of architectural glass blocks is to allow daylighting, and lower artificial lighting loads. Thus, Build Solar have reduced the active cell area of the PV, while still pulling back efficiency and yield by concentrating incoming light. The power density at standard tests conditions is analogous to approx. 25 Wp/m2. This compares well with amorphous silicon and organic photovoltaics which also have a similar power density. With the addition of the concentrators and solar cells in the block, internal convective air currents are reduced which in turn improves the thermal insulation performance of the block versus the standard hollow version. The traditional glass block has a U-Value =2.8 W/m2 K. Solar Squared Glass Block aims to reduce this by up to 50 %. The improvement of U-Value to 1.4 W/m2 K will result in thermal energy savings of 0.51 kWh/annum/block. This equates to Year 1 savings of 69,700 kWh, the equivalent of 6 houses' energy demand. By year 4 this is 4,056,114 kWh or 347 houses (based on U-Value improvement from 2.8 to 1.4 W/m2 K, Year 1-unit sales of 136,400 units, year 5 unit sales of 7,937,600 units and an average UK household energy usage of 11,700 kWH p.a.). The CO2e savings equate to 24t CO2e saved in Year 1 rising to 1,425t CO2e by Year 4 (based on UK grid CO2e grid electricity of 0.35156kg CO2e/kWH, BEIS Carbon Factors 2017). The price per tonne of carbon saved equates to ?73k in Year 1 falling to just ?11k per tonne by Year 4. Assuming full market adoption to 114m glass blocks this results in carbon savings of over 20,000t per annum. The concentration concept is not new and has been proven in other concentrating solar technologies. In the case of Solar Squared, the team at Exeter have chosen a relatively low power concentrator which magnifies by a factor 3 - 6. This allows the concentrating lens to have a wide angle of acceptance (ca. half acceptance angle 35°), meaning that contrary to typical high concentration application which need dual axis tracking, a vertically installed south facing Solar Squared array should be able to receive light for at least 7 hours a day. The Energy Payback Time of the system can be as low as 3yrs which is comparable to current rooftop PV technologies, something that current BIPV struggle to deliver. The Energy Return On Investment of Solar Squared is targeted to be less than 5 years with an estimated equivalent carbon footprint of 20g CO2e/kWh energy generated. Based on the BEIS toolkit for valuation of energy use the Year 4 energy savings have an NPV of?619,280 and an annualized NPV. BUILD SOLAR is a recent startup and an outcome of more than five years of Solar PV research at the University of Exeter. Since its launch at the Cleantech Innovate UK in April this year it has managed to raise a lot of interest from several construction companies and media. Some of the notable articles can be found below. Build Solar in the Press • Solar power glass bricks generate energy while letting in light, Reuteurs, November 28th, 2017 • Watts new in glass blocks, Royal Institute of British Architects September 8th2017 • Researchers develop solar glass blocks to power houses, PV Magazine August 24th2017 • Could This Glass Brick Be the Solution to Solar Energy's Design Problems?, Architectural Digest August 23rd2017 • Revolutionary glass building blocks generate their own solar energy, Inhabitat August17th2017 • University of Exeter creates energy generating glass bricks, BIM+Chartered Institute of Building August 23rd2017 • Solar blocks could replace solar panels on buildings, TreeHugger, August17th2017 • These solar glass bricks let in light while generating energy, Curbed August 23rd2017 • Is This Solar Power Tech the Future of Glass Blocks?, Architect-Journal of American Architects, August17th2017 • How to Leverage Glass Block Construction to Achieve LEED Certification, Architizer August 31st2017 • These solar glass blocks would make great skylights for your solar roofs, Techcrunch August18th2017 |
Website | http://buildsolar.eu |
Description | Engagement with Nanjin Guodian Automation Co Ltd., China |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
Results and Impact | Formal discussion with researches from Nanjin Guodian Automation Co Ltd. for collaborative work in AC and DC microgrid. Staffs from the provincial technology department also attended the discussion. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
Description | Environment and sustainability day |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Regional |
Primary Audience | Schools |
Results and Impact | Over 100 students from all over cornwall, UK participated in the Environment and sustainability day at University of Exeter's Penryn campus, and we presented how solar cell works |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013,2014,2015 |
Description | UK India Workshop on integrated renewable energy and hydrogen |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
Results and Impact | We organised UK Indian workshop on integrated renewable energy and hydrogen generation where solar energy generation and utilisation and heat recovery through phase change material was discussed. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |